


In the deepest woods

by RobinWritesChirps



Category: Hatchetfield Universe - Team StarKid
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, F/M, Frenemies, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Witches, Wizards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 16:41:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30125769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobinWritesChirps/pseuds/RobinWritesChirps
Summary: Lady Holloway welcomes an old friend into her den deep into the woods one last time – but isn't every time the last time?Healer bae Holloway and dark mage Wilbur, established Willoway. Sorta kinda.
Relationships: Wilbur Cross/Miss Holloway
Comments: 6
Kudos: 6





	In the deepest woods

**Author's Note:**

> I’m pure Willoway trash now lads and lasses ✌️

The forest warned her of his coming long before his smirking face showed up at her threshold. The first clue was always a faint shift in the rustle of the wind - when it still traveled so far here into the forest. Lady Holloway lived in the deepest part of the woods and everything dead or live reported to her in whispers. Such were the aptitudes she had honed over the years of her life. Young Wil had powers of a kind she would never possess, but she had no wish for the deadly gifts of his. She knew how his mistress taught her disciples. She knew how she chastised them.

  
The birds pecking seeds at her window sill flew away in a flurry. A fox kit tumbled down from the slope at the entrance to hide under the sculpted oaken bed that was hers. The door was never closed – indeed, she lived under the earth in the hollow of a tree stump and anyone who knew the way could slide down the hole of soil and leaves and branches to find her at home. Friends and foes made it down here and Holloway could never quite tell if Wilbur was one or the other.

  
"Greetings, lass."

  
Flirtatious as ever, he was leaning against the archway of her solar to hide how impeded he was from the gash tearing his flesh from groin to shoulder. Lady Holloway sighed deeply and gestured him in. All the creatures dwelling here with her hid at his sight and it seemed as though even the rays of evening sun that pierced her ceiling all across were fading, as if the sun itself shirked his presence here. Wil sat leisurely on her table without a care for her material. He was as nonchalant as he would be were she checking no more than a fresh scab on his pinky.

  
"One of these days, you'll get yourself so torn up that even I won't be able to help," she grumbled.

  
It was as bad a wound as they come, that was plain. Even a less learned witch would have recognized the thick ooze black magic left behind, running down his body with a stench. Holloway wielded but white magic, the science of all that grew and lived and died. His force was from another realm which humans had no business meddling with. She knew how to placate the wound and soothe the pain, but just barely. Wilbur kept dabbling with powers grander than the both of them. One day, he would come to regret it like she already did.

  
"One day I won't be needing you, is more like it," he said. He had a smile in corner, a teasing glint she knew by heart in his eyes. Young Wil always thought himself so above the realities of the world, like his vicious practice didn't pull him closer and closer to the end of his pitiful little existence down here. "But I'll still come around to let you see this pretty face, don't you fret."

  
"Take off your tunic."

  
He cocked a suggestive eyebrow but violently coughed his lungs out before he could give her, doubtless, another piece of his taunting mind. Willabella Muckwab half destroyed the disciples in her palm, even Young Wil. Even her own son.

  
"Take it off yourself," he finally retorted after a vicious fit of coughs, but by then the effect was spoiled and he sounded more weak than enticing.

  
Holloway scoffed, but she set herself to undo the few buttons still hanging on. Shreds of fabric and skin had been torn from him and blood had seeped into what remained long enough that a crust had formed. He hissed when it ripped from his body, but the cool air of her den seemed to be soothing him before she even had a look.

  
"Well, this isn't the usual." She muttered to herself as well as to him, for it wouldn't do to let him lose all consciousness in this state. She loathed the thought that there even was such a thing as usual.

  
The cut was deeper than ever before and black magic kept pouring thick and pungent from the opening. A part of her admired his resilience, though above all she hated his mistress and mother for inflicting such pain and his folly too for begging for it over and over again. No matter, she passed her hands onto it, just hovering over the open flesh, and chanted soft prayers of healing to pry all evil from him. It was a vain pursuit, of course, but she knew what a body could withstand. Young Wil would not die tonight. Blood ceased to gush out as her words tightened the skin back to how it ought to be.This hurt him greatly and she gave him a rag to bite into when it come to the last sharpest tugs, but it hardly muffled the cries of anguish he so smugly pretended to be above. Finally, the wound was closed secure till the next time and Wil flopped back onto the table like a ragdoll. He sighed, coughed again.

  
"Times are changing, lass," he told the ceiling, then closed his eyes.

  
Lady Holloway prepared some soothing balms she had brewed under a bountiful harvest. Sometimes, Wil ran her dirt poor, but then she had not had a coin in her pocket for many years, living down here under her stump. So long as the forest stood for her to pluck from, she could still earn her due. With everything that went on in Willabella's circle, though, this was precisely a point of concern of hers. Black magic hated all that lived.

  
"I'm not anxious for them to change," she replied evenly.

  
She was a healer after all, she told herself as she patched him back into something more presentable. The forbidden magic had dripped in nasty puddles into the ground and she would have to cleanse it later, but for now her priority was to save the life in her hands. The best bloody healer that he ever trained, her master had called her oftentimes. A layer of balm, another of clean fabric, weaving them together in an intricate pattern only she knew best. Wilbur was almost relaxed under her touch. It was an intimate thing, the practice of healing. All those who knew white magic knew that when you had saved a person's life, a shard of it persisted in you in some way, whether they were aware of the fact or not. By now, a damn lot of Young Wil lived inside of her, all the times he had sought her. If only it were enough.

  
"You could join us, you know," he said after a long moment of silence.

  
The last bit of dangling fabric tugged neatly into the rest, the linen covered nearly his entire torso and all of his shoulder, but his fancy for elegance would have to come second to survival. Holloway began to sort her utensils and materials back into place. It was nearly time for supper and she expected to make a pot for two tonight.

  
"I'd all rather die in the fight against," she said, "And I very well might, but not before taking you down, dear."

  
Wil laughed as though the two of them did not know too well she was in earnest. She prodded his side to urge him off the table – the good side yet unharmed. She was not cruel to that point.

  
"Not enjoying the view?" He smirked. "I'm all yours for the taking."

  
"That you were the last twelve times I've saved your life. Off."

  
He climbed off with a grunt of pain and sat by the stove as she cooked. He was, all malice aside, entertaining company to have around and although he did not utter another word to sway her into the clutches of his clan again that night, she could imagine this would not be the end of it. Wil could paint a pretty picture when he had his mind set on it.

  
"Every time I leave you, I forget all about your pretty face till the next time," he told her over a steaming bowl of stew. "And every time I come back, you're a hundred times as pretty as before, darling."

  
Holloway sipped on her broth. The black magic had been chased and cleansed from her house for the most part, but not all of it. No, certainly not it all. Wil sang a pretty song when he wanted, though, as silly as he had been when they were children running around the village together playing knight and princess. She longed for the simplicity of those days.

  
"If you want a bed for the night, I'll prepare one for you, Wilbur. You don't have to try and charm me, it's more foolish on you than you think."

  
"I'll take your bed over any other, Holly, and we'll see about charm."

  
She hid a smirk into her bowl. Their feet touched under the table. Wil grinned, knowing he had won. Holloway despised to let him win, but how sweet the defeat. Every time, one last night.

  
Of course he shared her bed that night. There were only so many times left before their roads parted for good. So many embraces, so many smiles shared at candlelight between the roughspun linens of her bed late at night. So many times she would look into his dark eyes and see a friend and a lover. There would come a day he would barge at her door and she would spurn him.There would be a war some day and whichever side won, darkness or light, one of them would mourn the other.

  
In the morning, Wil was gone.

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been having terrible issues with typing so this is the first fic I have fully handwritten into my iPad (and converted into typed text). Kinda happy with that! Resourcefulness lmao


End file.
